Research Associate

Biography

After completing undergraduate and master’s degrees at Loughborough University, in 2010 Oli undertook a PhD in the University of Leicester’s Department of Sociology. His doctoral research was an ethnography of health promotion (particularly the promotion of physical activity) in a deprived neighbourhood. He graduated in July 2015 at which point he was already working at the University of Abertay Dundee as a Lecturer in Physical Activity and Public Health. He subsequently secured a NIHR CLAHRC West Dan Hill Fellowship in Health Equity hosted by the University of Bath between 2016-2017. He joined the SAPPHIRE Group in 2017 to conduct ethnographic research centrally concerned with the roles of PPI and research evidence in the design and delivery of health services.

His research more generally focuses on health inequalities. He engages with the disparity in opportunity and possibility presented to people throughout British society. He is particularly interested in the experiences of those living in deprived areas and is critical of the current conceptualisation of a ‘healthy lifestyle’ and its promotion as a set of individual choices.